Pickard beaten in the quarter-finals in Slovenia

At the PTT Slovenian Open, Burnley’s Fliss Pickard lost her women’s class 6 quarter-final 3-1 against Maliak Alieva from Russia, the 23-year-old former class 7 who has been reclassified as a 6. Competing for the British Para Table Tennis Team, Pickard took some positives from her performance. “I felt there were some good points and things to definitely work on,” said the 23 year old. “She has come down a classification so I’ve not had much experience of playing her. “But definitely with a few little tweaks I feel that there is not much in it. “I’m looking forward to the team event now and getting more match experience. “I’m making progress all the time and being based in Sheffield is definitely helping me. “Training is going well and I can see it on the table.” Only last week, Pickard was one of six British medalists in the team events on the final day of the PTT Slovakia Open in Bratislava. Pickard won silver in the women’s class 6-7 with her partner Maryna Lytovchenko, the class 6 World number three from Ukraine. The duo beat the Australian/Hungarian team of Rebecca Julian and Dora Molnar 2-0, and followed that with a 2-0 win against the German team of class 6 World number six Stephanie Grebe and class 7 Bente Harenberg. They had to settle for silver after losing their final match in the round-robin competition against top seeds Seong Ok Kim and Kunwoo Lee from Korea 2-0. Pickard went out of… [Read full story]